Tuesday, 5 June 2018

Draught Scottish 80/- Pale Ale 1947 - 1960

I'm concluding my series on Scottish draught Pale Ale with the strongest, 80/-, or Export. The Scottish equivalent of Best Bitter.

As with 60/- and 70/-, the gravity range is quite narrow, a degree or two either side of 1044º. It's very convenient if, like me, you trying to categorise beers. English beers are all over the place and I have to resort to artificial categorisations.

I'm pleased to see one example that has clearly been coloured darker: the Younger's keg Bitter. That was probably only 25, as brewed. To give you an idea of how dark 55 is, Bitter was 20-25, Dark Mild around 80, on that scale.

The Younger's beer came under different names. In Scotland, it was 80/- or Export, in England it was usually sold as IPA. Which is a bit odd as the IPA they brewed in the 19th century was called XXP, which by 1945 was the name of their 60/-, at least in the brewery.

Does anyone still brew a classic 80/-? I guess Belhaven must. And Caledonian.

Draught Scottish 80/- Pale Ale 1947 - 1960

Year

Brewer

Beer

Price
per pint (d)

OG

FG

ABV

App.
Atten-uation

colour

1951

Maclay

Exp

1043

1014

3.84

67.44%

1964

McEwans

Special

20

1043.6

1007.6

4.50

82.57%

20

1959

Wm. Younger

Keg Bitter

19

1043.7

1007.8

4.68

82.15%

55

1960

Wm. Younger

Younger's Bitter

18

1043.9

1010.8

4.30

75.40%

1947

Gordon & Blair

Pale Ale

20

1045.5

1004.5

5.36

90.11%

1958

Bernard

Special No. 1

1046

1013

4.28

71.74%

Average

19.3

1044.3

1009.6

4.49

78.23%

Sources:

Thomas Usher Gravity Book held at the Scottish Brewing
Archive, document number TU/6/11.

Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan
Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.

T & J Bernard's brewing records held at the Scottish
Brewing Archive.

Maclay brewing record held at the Scottish Brewing Archive,
document number M/6/1/1/28

There are quite a few 80/– beers still about, at least in comparison to 70/- and 60/– which are moribund if not extinct. Stewarts as mentioned is a substitute for McEwan’s 80/– (if that's not damning it with faint praise) good enough to have replaced the former at the lagendary Diggers pub in Edinburgh. Caledonian have recently added more hops to theirs!

A Brew Rat, if you are doing a home brew version, fairly pure caramel is available in supermarkets in small bottles (as a gravy browning). Here in Australia we have stuff called Parisian Essence and on an Aussie Brewing Forum a UK member confirmed that his Morrison's sourced product was basically the same formulation. Couple of tsp in a 23L brew will darken nicely for milds etc - I always use it in Ron's recipes.

Make your birthday special

By brewing a beer originally made on that date.

For a mere 25 euros, I'll create a bespoke recipe for any day of the year you like. As well as the recipe, there's a few hundred words of text describing the beer and its historical context and an image of the original brewing record.